Peace. It’s as sweet as can be in my new apartment, mine for as long as I wish, while my landlady and African artifacts trader, continues her business from Texas, with her husband. The address is glorious – 291 ½ in part of the street address, as Josh calls it, ‘the lovely side’ of the West Village.
‘You are in the magic zone’, said my landlady as she handed over the apartment keys to me ‘and I think our meeting each other was an extension of that.’ We beamed at each other and sealed the deal. I don’t know if it’s my Australian accent or something else – people seem naturally well disposed toward me which makes everything easier.
My friend, who is a theatre critic, as well as having his own television program and his own production company, had dinner with me a few nights ago as a belated welcome to New York. He brought along his business partner in the production company, who had worked in an executive role at Disney for years and was later producer for Lion King. This business partner is now involved in a range of other projects and was keen for advice on doing a theatre improvisation with local villages in a developing country and wanting my advice.
Over dinner I told both men that I’d welcome some engagement with the arts to balance out all the time I was spending on micro-finance and the players involved in this world. My friend started rattling off names of theatres and cultural agencies where he could arrange an introduction while his business partner said it was a waste of my time. That I was clearly a connector who made things happen and he’d introduce me to a woman who was the consummate connector here in New York, aside from traveling the world helping companies and cultural institutions make things happen. ‘You need to be introduced to people who are like you’, he said. The next day an invitation arrived to join his table at the annual American Theater Wing Gala later this month, with theater people and media flying in from across the country for what is apparently the event of the year for many in the industry. So I get to dress up and meet the connector too.
Meanwhile, at work we’ve followed through with more grant opportunities and I coordinated WWB’s response to a US Treasury Report on women and microfinance and SMEs (small and medium enterprises). I’ve also continued to Co-Chair the Development Committee of the Women’s Funding Network which has required teleconferences every week – so it’s been busy.
It’s been a long weekend due to Labor Day on Monday and so Josh and I headed out on Saturday to visit Josh’s Dad and long term partner. It was a three and a half hour drive and they were thrilled to see us when we arrived. We went out for a gorgeous lunch and long talk before hitting the road again mid-afternoon in order to get back to New York before evening. That night, back in New York, Josh was exhausted from the long drive and so I walked to my apartment, just 5 minutes away, and stopped to talk to a street artist with a bushy white beard and the typecast twinkling blue eyes. His pictures of Greenwich/West Village and SoHo street scenes were a Parisienne take of bohemian west and east village NY life. Everyone you meet here seems to readily share their story – that’s why I love walking the streets. It’s illuminating – catching stories at night, like fireflies. This artist spends four months in New York, four months in Key West, Florida and four months in Vancouver and seems to eke out a pretty fine existence. He gave me his best tips on where to eat and where to visit, being semi-local by returning here each year and painting these iconic cafes and scenes. I walked home with two of his pictures tucked under my arm, swinging a parcel of Lebanese food and thinking how lucky I was as I turned into the gate leading to my half moon apartment.
I’d been reading the New York Style Guide, written by an Australian and purchased before I left Australia. The author recommended Chelsea Antique Market for weekend meandering. It turned out to be another place to catch good stories. One woman, who sold me a stunning dress at tiny cost, told me about watching a mime with her 11 year old son who was transfixed by the performance and she said to him ‘you can go up and join them, honey’. ‘No I can’t’, he retorted. ‘Yes you can’, she said. ‘This is New York – you can do anything you want’. He looked at her, maybe calculating the emotional cost of doing so, and then went up and started miming with the performers and his mum said that she could see the scales of self-consciousness falling away from him as he gave himself fully to the moment. ‘This is New York’, she said to me, ‘we can make anything possible’. She showed me the latest text message from her son who was in a creativity workshop in Washington. It was accompanied by an image of the scene from his hotel window at twilight. She went on ‘he really believes that now – that he has the courage and ability to do anything he wants.’
Every day there are more and more stories about people losing their jobs, losing their houses, not being able to afford decent education for their kids and I wonder why we’re not introducing our microfinance and micro-health insurance programs here in America. Especially at a time when parts of New York resemble a developing country while India has just announced that it’s starting its own aid program to donate to other countries in need. The wheel turns.
And yet optimism and hope rise up, seemingly in equal proportion to the grey, hot steam rising up from shafts in pavements across the city. It will be an emotional week with all kinds of activities planned for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I hope to go to some of the free Bach concerts at Trinity Church near the World Trade Center and to go to another event that my new mentor, Michaela, has invited me to attend. Probably like many New Yorkers, I’ll see the light display – with beams of light emphasizing new life where the towers had been. There’s even a world premiere of a new opera – focused on a war hero who predicted a terrorist attack on the twin towers at some point and planned the evacuation of the hundreds and hundreds of staff in his corporation – so when it happened he put his plan into action and got all but half a dozen to safety, then went back for the others and perished.
Last night a yellow moon slung low over the city. If I’d been that street artist I would have picked up my brushes and painted that scene of Bleecker Street by night and a buttery moon suspended overhead. Of course I should have taken my cue from the boy’s mother and found some brushes and painted the scene myself. I had to remember, I could do anything.
Jane